If Only You Were Here
by Arian Sidhe
Summary: Fifteen years after the rebellion, Marius can't sleep. A certain brown-haired girl is on his mind. Told from the perspective of Marius, Cosette, and their daughters.
1. Chapter 1

He could remember the night he'd started having the feeling.

He'd woken, gasping, almost choking. "Marius! Darling!" Cosette had cried. "Are you all right? Are you hurt?"

He couldn't reply—all he knew was that it felt something like when he missed Courfeyrac or Gavroche or any of his many friends that he'd lost in the rebellion. Except that this was a thousand times worse, a million times worse.

It had started with the dream. But his dream hadn't been anything out of the ordinary, had it? He'd been walking along one of the many avenues in Paris…and it had been raining.

_Rain_. It hit him like a punch in the gut, like a fist to the face, like a sword in the belly.

'_Ponine._

His sarcastic, street-toughened friend who had died in his arms, so many years ago—why was he remembering her now? All these years later, when he had three beloved children and a still-more-beloved wife; when he was a respected pillar of society, with the barricades behind him—why did he remember her?

Of course, he'd felt a tremendous sense of guilt after the battle. How could he have been so blind? How could he not have seen that Eponine was starting to feel things for him that went beyond friendship? How could he have sent her to find Cosette—and even more twistedly, how could she have obeyed? How could she have swallowed that hurt and pain?

He groaned. Beside him, Cosette shifted in her sleep.

Cosette. His darling, his beloved, who he'd been starstruck by in that one moment on the street. His beautiful wife.

"_Don't you fret, Monsieur Marius…"_

He started. "Eponine," he whispered. "Get out of my head."

He still remembered the look of contentment on her face as she whispered to him that a little fall of rain could hardly hurt her now, and that the rain would make the flowers grow. It would have been so easy, so easy to lean forward a little and kiss her.

But he hadn't. Because of Cosette, of course. Because he loved her. But…

He shook his head. But what? He _loved _Cosette! She was…well, his wife, for starters!

Not only that, but she had given him the best three children he had ever known. There was twelve-year-old Claudine, already a beautiful lady with her mother's eyes. There was eight-year-old Gavroche, a little man who could hardly sit still. And then…

"Papa?"

He looked up to see the silhouette of his youngest in the doorway. "Nina? What are you still doing up?"

"I can't sleep. There's a monster knocking at my door."

Chuckling, he swung his feet out of bed and padded over to his daughter. "There is, is there? You want your old father to teach it a lesson?" He picked her up, swinging her onto his back, and she giggled.

"Papa, you're not old!"

He sighed. "I'm older than you know, darling. How's about this—let's get you to bed, and you go to sleep while I teach that monster what's what. Okay?"

"Okay!" She rested her chin on his head as they made their way back to the nursery. Gavroche was sleeping like the dead, and Claudine had moved to her own bedroom on her birthday.

He set her down on her bed. "There—you all right now?"

She rubbed her pointed little chin in thought, her large brown eyes wandering to the corner of the room. Then her face brightened. "Papa, tell me a story!"

"A story, Nina? This late at night?"

She pulled on his shirtsleeve. "_Please_, Papa!"

He looked at her, marveling at how she looked like neither him, nor Cosette, but a girl from so long ago, down to the enormous brown eyes. "All right, all right. Hmm. Once upon a time, there was a very foolish prince."

"But _Papa_," Nina interrupted, "princes are clever and good!"

"Well, this one was good, dearest, but not very clever. He was always arguing with his grandfather, the king. They didn't agree on how the kingdom should be run, and so the prince started to spend more time with his friends."

"Were they princes too?"

"No, darling—most of them were very poor. But they were smart and brave and good, and they wanted to change the kingdom. For though the king was a good man, he didn't know how people's lives were."

"How were they, Papa?"

He hesitated. How could he tell his five-year-old daughter of the squalid conditions that most of Paris had lived in? How could he live with himself if he did find a way of telling it? He settled for, "Very, very bad, dearest. But the prince lived for changing the kingdom—until one day, when he met a princess."

"Ooh!" He could see her eyes visibly brighten. "What was her name?"

"Uh…" He thought frantically. "Georgette. Princess Georgette was her name, and she was the most beautiful woman the kingdom had ever seen. And when the prince saw her, he immediately fell in love with her, and she with him.

"Now, one of this prince's friends was also a girl. She should have been a princess, for she deserved nothing better. But she was poor, like his other friends. And she had a secret. She was very much in love with the prince."

Nina gasped. "But the prince loves Princess Georgette!"

"Exactly, dearest. And for that reason she knew that the prince would never be in love with her. But she continued to be his friend, and to care for him and protect him…"

"Papa, you're crying." Nina's sweet face looked up at him worriedly. He touched his cheek and felt water.

"It's nothing, dearest. Anyway, the kingdom was getting closer and closer to a war. And finally, it happened. Princess Georgette was hidden away in the palace—because, of course, princesses are very precious and should be protected. The prince was out fighting, and his friend was with him."

"What was his friend's name?"

He tapped her nose. "It was Nina, like yours. She didn't like the war or the fighting, but she knew that the prince was too foolish to protect himself—and she was right." He let the sentence trail off until Nina poked him in the leg.

"Papa, finish the story!"

He smiled at her. "I'm getting there. Just as a bullet was about to strike the prince…" He let out a long breath. "Nina jumped in front of him, taking the shot."

"No!" Nina's hands were over her mouth. "But Papa, she'll die!"

Marius nodded heavily. "She did. And as she did, the foolish prince realized that she had loved him all along, and wept for his own foolishness."

He felt Nina crawl into his lap, crying. "Papa, this story is too sad!"

He stroked her head of nut-brown hair. "It gets better, sweetheart. The prince survived the war, came back to Princess Georgette, and reunited with his grandfather when he married the princess. And he lived happily until the end of his days with a large family and loving friends."

Nina sat up, her little face in a pout. "It isn't fair!"

"What isn't, dearest?"

"It's not fair that Georgette didn't do anything but married the prince, and that Nina died for him but didn't!"

His breath caught in his throat. _That _was what had been bothering him. And little Nina had stated it so plainly that he couldn't speak for a few seconds.

"But, darling, the prince loved Georgette."

"But he just _thought _he loved her! She was so pretty when he saw her that he just thought he was in love and forgot all about Nina!"

Marius felt like he'd been hit over the head with a sandbag. "W-well, darling…it's time for bed. There's your story—time for sleeping, now."

She grumbled, but got under the covers. "I didn't like that story, Papa," she said as he kissed her on the forehead. "It was too sad. Nina should have married the prince."

He didn't answer her, shutting the door and stumbling back down the hallway and into bed.

Nina didn't know anything. She was only five. He hadn't even told her all the details. But…

_But what? _he yelled at himself. _I am married, with a wonderful wife who makes my days the best they have ever been! Enough with this nonsense!_

And yet her words had had the ring of truth….

He groaned and rolled over, tears leaking from his eyes. _Oh, 'Ponine…if only you were here!_


	2. Chapter 2

She could remember a time when he'd told her everything.

Cosette rolled over, staring at her sleeping husband. His face was grim and set, and he had grown older in fifteen years, but he was still the man she had married—her loving, devoted, faithful husband.

And she was still the woman he'd married, wasn't she? Of course she was. She made sure to not overeat. Her eyes were still a beautiful blue, and her hair held barely any gray. Perhaps there were a few wrinkles, but Marius was not devoid of those, either.

She was still the same person, too. She made sure that her love for him shone through in everything she did—caring for the children, wishing him good day and good night; even in the most simple tasks one could not ignore her love for her husband.

And yet…

And yet, two weeks ago, he'd woken up gasping something about rain and flowers and...Eponine.

_Eponine_. In all her life, she'd never been able to sort out the feelings she held for the girl. Cosette was the kind of person who saw things in black and white; Eponine had bullied her and made her miserable when they were children, which was bad. But she'd saved her husband, which was good. But she'd been in love with her husband, which was definitely bad.

Cosette sighed, turning away from Marius. The rebellion was far behind them—fifteen years. Fifteen years, one marriage, three children and a high social standing away. She thought he'd more or less forgotten about the rebellion and his friends long ago. Of course, he still woke sometimes, babbling about Gavroche and Courfeyrac and Enjolras and pain and fire, but Cosette knew what to do then. All she had to do was hold him and whisper their promise to him over and over, and eventually his breathing would slow and he would look up and kiss her.

"You're so good to me, Cosette," he always breathed. "You're so good."

Perhaps that was the problem—that she was too good. But she couldn't be other than good—she lived her life by being good! It was a stronger part of her daily life even than her love for Marius.

She'd thought him handsome and foreign when she saw him in the street. But his eyes captivated her—his eyes that drank her up as if she were the last oasis in a desert. She had smiled uncertainly, but he had kept staring. And then, in only a few seconds, Inspector Javert had barged in, her father had whisked her away, and she was left with an imprint of the boy burned behind her eyelids and a strange feeling in her stomach.

That had all happened years ago. During the rebellion, she'd hidden in her father's apartment, terrified of her love or her father dying, trying to make the food last, too scared to step outside. And then her beloved father had come home, smelling like a sewer but alive, and carrying her still-more-beloved husband.

At first, Marius hadn't responded to her. But as the weeks passed, he opened up to her—to her singing and soothing, and he had kissed her and proclaimed her his savior and married her.

And only now did she wonder if she'd done something wrong.

Perhaps the problem was that she'd been too affectionate, too cloying. She was sure _Eponine _would have known what to do—just what to say to comfort poor Marius. _Eponine _wouldn't have urged him to forget his dead friends or made him focus only on her.

She felt two great tears slide down her cheek. Sliding out of bed quietly, she walked over to the mirror, lit the candle, and looked.

There—just as she knew she'd be. Older, yes, with gray strands in her hair. Laugh lines webbing her face. Enormous blue eyes that stared worriedly. A slender neck, and a fashionable nightgown.

She was still the same. Good old Cosette, Constant Cosette, Perfect Cosette.

But he had changed.

She put down the mirror, trying not to smash it and break the image of the perfect, constant woman. Instead, she crawled back into bed, trying not to burst out crying and wake her husband.

Why? Why wasn't being Constant Cosette good enough? Being constant and good was all she knew; she couldn't just switch like that! And she didn't want to! Marius had fallen in love with Constant Cosette!

But the rock-solid certainty lodged in her stomach as she lay there, crying and desperately trying not to; the certainty that, though he slept beside her, a dead girl lay between them.

She could have shaken him awake and demanded an explanation. She could have been frank and forward, like another girl would have been. She could have gotten up and gone to stay at a friend's house, declaring that she would not go home until Marius forgot about Eponine. She was his wife; it was her right.

But she would never create a scandal on purpose, and she knew she'd never be able to get the words out if she did wake him.

So she burrowed into her blankets and tried to sleep, turned away from Marius. But it was hard to do with a ghost lying at her back.


End file.
